


over and over (many setting suns)

by orphan_account



Series: i hate you, i love you (i hate that i love you) [5]
Category: Naruto, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Accidental Child Acquisition, Alternate Universe - BNHA, Hero!Madara, Illegal Activities, M/M, MadaTobi Week 2019, Marriage of Convenience, Reincarnation, Soulmates, Vigilante!Tobirama, be gay do crimes, starring hashirama as all might and madara as a not-shitty endeavor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2020-08-11 07:04:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20149630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Senju Tobirama. Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”The cuffs locked around his wrists clink against each other as he laces his fingers together in an attempt to keep himself from reaching out and strangling Madara where he stands. Even with closed eyes, the bright reflection of his jumpsuit is burned into his mind – they didn’t allow him the dignity of a suit, or any kind of clothing that’s not his prison-assigned garb, so he’s all decked out in neon orange for his wedding.“Senju,” Madara says lowly, where the priest can’t hear him, “you know that—”“I marry you and I get amnesty,” he repeats dully. “I don’t, and I get to rot in jail for the rest of my life.”Then, louder, with the high burn of malice in his voice and the most derisive tone he can bring himself to summon: “I do.”--**you don't need to read/watch bnha to understand this story; i'll explain all the key parts of that universe, and it's an au, not a crossover**





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> hewwo folks i hope we're enjoying madatobi week so far! i'm super excited for this one and i've been working super hard on it so i hope you all enjoy :-)

“Mama?”

He’s six years old, the first time it happens. A sudden dizzy spell, a flash of nausea, a heatwave – and then, the memories, pouring in.

There’s a man grown, with snow-white hair and three sharp slashes of crimson drawing across his face (Tobirama’s face – it’s impossible, but that’s _Tobirama’s face)_. Another, with a massive, bristly mane of black hair and a cruel blood-red smile. They’re both dressed in dark cloaks printed with motifs of red clouds, with red-and-white uchiwa fans on the back, between the shoulderblades. Tobirama knows that that’s where the Clan sigil traditionally goes – _how_ does he know that again? – but he can’t shake the feeling that his should be different, should be pointier.

Not-Tobirama struggles for a moment, bracing his muscles and trying to move, and it’s only then that he sees the black rods, glittering like crystal under red moonlight, shoved forcefully _through_ his body like arrows piercing through a target.

The dark man laughs. _You look so pretty when you’re trying to fight me, don’t you know that? So pretty, **Tobira-chan.**_

Tobirama wants to protest, and he can tell that not-Tobirama does too – that’s what _Mama_ calls him, that’s _her_ nickname for him – but in a single fluid movement the dark man sweeps his feet out from under him. The resurrected body is clumsy and cold, unreactive with dead nerves and no feeling, and he drops to the ground, refusing to wince.

Instead of fighting back (perhaps he can’t?), he bares shiny white teeth in a snarl. _Release me at once, Madara. I don’t know what you think you’re going to achieve, dressing me up like one of your puppets, but it’s not going to work. I wasn’t the only Kage Orochimaru revived – there will be more coming, and you will fail._

_The other Kage don’t matter,_ says the dark man confidently, carelessly. _They’re not going to take my victory from me, and they’re not going to take **you** from me either. Hashirama’s already done it once; he’s not going to do it again._

A drop of cold sweat slides down Tobirama’s spine. He doesn’t understand half of what his counterpart and the dark man are saying, but it gives him a bad feeling. There’s a strange sensation, like pins and needles beneath his skin, and somehow, he can tell that there are people coming, an entire army’s worth of shinobi stretching to the horizon, and his anija among them, but – will they stop him? _Can _they stop him? 

Not-Tobirama seems to have that same awareness, and he looks away from the dark man, into the distance. _Hashirama tried to stop you because you were a madman, Madara. I would have stayed with you if you actually loved me, you know._ There’s a long, heavy pause. _I would have done anything for you, if you actually loved me._

The dark man crouches so that he can look not-Tobirama in the eyes, his frosty violet glare warm at the edges with an insanity that makes Tobirama shiver in his pajamas. _In that case, I have good news for you, baby,_ he whispers. _First, though— _He looks into the horizon. _—first, there’s something I need to do for us, for our future together._

Not-Tobirama bites his lip and closes his eyes, and Tobirama wants to scream at him to get up, to say something, to do _anything,_ but he doesn’t.

He’s just one old man, and he’s been defeated, and both of them know it. 

“Yes, Tobira-chan?”

At first, he assumes that it’s a problem with his Quirk, but his Quirk only affects the material, tangible things he can see and touch, not his dreams.

After long enough, he stops trying to fight it, stops trying to understand it, and just sinks into the familiar sensation of slipping his skin to become another version of himself in another universe in another time, the only constant his sole companion, the dark man.

They’re always together, no matter what. 

Another strange dream, again featuring an adult Tobirama and the dark man; this time they are dressed in traditional armor, plated and layered and lacquered in bright red and blue, standing on a precipice. They’re holding hands, armored gauntlets clutched tight to each other, fingers woven together so intimately that it makes Tobirama’s heart ache just watching them. 

_I don’t want to leave you,_ says adult Tobirama, and his voice doesn’t crack but something in his eyes is shattered and heartbroken. _And I don’t want you to leave me. Are you sure that I have to do this?_

The dark man leans up to press a kiss to the tip of adult Tobirama’s nose – he’s shorter than him, and can’t reach his forehead – and when he withdraws, his presence lingers, long strands of black hair clinging to adult Tobirama’s marked cheeks. _You know we don’t have a choice, koibito. With the political climate, with the unrest in my Clan – it’s best for everyone that you go, and that you don’t return until it’s safe for you to do so._

A pause. _And how long will that be from now?_

_I’ll come and visit you, you know. Hashirama can’t stop me from going out on missions and accidentally taking a little extra time to go see the mountains, admire the view—_

_Madara. How long will it take?_

The dark man sighs, running gloved hands through adult Tobirama’s fluffy white hair and resting one palm against the sharp curve of his jaw. _I don’t know, Tobirama. I don’t know._

Adult Tobirama is not pleased. _I – I see. I should be going, then. It wouldn’t do for the white demon of the Senju to be seen around Konoha so soon after being declared a missing-nin and murdering a child._

The dark man makes a frustrated noise. _Danzō perverted your teachings, Tobirama, and that attitude has begun to spread to Hiruzen. If you hadn’t killed him—_

_If I hadn’t killed him, I could still live in the village. I could still be with **you.**_

_That’s not true, koibito, and you know it._

Before either of them can say another word, adult Tobirama turns his back, fur collar blowing in the wind, and vanishes in a flash of golden light, leaving the dark man standing alone on the mountainside overlooking the village, leaving him alone with only the whispers of words unsaid by either of them.

_I love you, Tobirama,_ he whispers to the empty air, but there’s no one there to hear. 

“Are soulmates – real?” 

A moment of stolen peace in an onsen far outside of Fire Country. Adult Tobirama and Madara have already done their courting dance, have already had sex – Tobirama, only twelve, had been too embarrassed to even listen – and now they simply lay into each other in the hot water, eyes closed, drowsing, peaceful smiles on their faces. 

Madara, soft and loving, cradling their newly-adopted child in his arms with a sort of glow about him that Tobirama’s never seen on anyone before. 

_She’s ours now,_ he whispers, and adult Tobirama, exhausted after a weeks-long mission where he barely escaped death at the hands of Kinkaku and Ginkaku, can barely smile in assent before he drops off to sleep next to his husband and daughter.

It’s nice, sometimes, having the memories.

It’s sweet.

“Why do you ask?”

Madara, gone mad with power, screeches and laughs and shrieks as the world ends at his command. Tobirama watches as his adult self is impaled over and over and over again on the gunbai, and then again as the dark man sloppily makes out with the remains.

Adult Tobirama, drowning in his own blood, crying out voicelessly for a man who isn’t there, for a man who couldn’t listen; he doesn’t see the face of his murderer. He doesn’t live to recognize spiky black hair and swirling red eyes and that particular brand of anger-grief-love that has always been so characteristically _Madara._

It’s horrible, sometimes, having the memories.

It hurts. 

“…No reason,” he says, remembering the dark man and his cold, maniacal grin, so ferocious yet so loving. That insanity has always drawn Tobirama like a moth to a flame; it’s familiar somehow, attractive somehow, and worry and loathing churns in his gut when he can bring himself to think about it.

He _hates_ the dark man. he’s died so many times at his hands, but—

—a part of him knows, deep down, that he can’t hate Madara. He’s _never_ been able to hate Madara, not since he knew the man that first time, and he’s loved him with a reckless single-mindedness ever since; even in the dreams where they die on each other’s swords, there is something deep in his soul that sings _right-right-right._ This is where you _belong,_ says the lifeblood, pouring out of his gut and throat and chest and head, spilled by kunai and gunbai and tantō alike. Dead or alive, he is yours and you are his, and it is a crueler fate that would separate you rather than allow you to perish in each other’s arms.

He grows to become something of an insomniac, but even that doesn’t save him; the visions come night and day, sleeping or waking, it doesn’t matter.

They always come.

_-chakra tearing, ripping at his clothing, at his skin; hot, long-fingered hands carving bruises into his ribs and thighs and throat and hips; Madara inside him, fucking into him like there’s no tomorrow, like he needs him in the same way that he needs air or food or water-_

_-blood, screaming, the scent of sweat and piss hanging heavy in the air. Tobirama sees his secret lover, sees Izuna, and in a heartbeat he chooses. In a heartbeat, he dies. A sword, plunging through his abdomen, an outraged shout, a cry of anguish-_

_-love, soft and languid. in the early morning, Madara is still asleep, and Tobirama smiles at him, reveling in the knowledge that this man is **his,** all his; no one can take him from him. No one can make him give him up. He’s free to love his husband until the day he dies, and oh, does he intend to do so-_

“Alright then, love. Goodnight.”


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very short this time but just setting up some worldbuilding that i deleted from last chapter cause i didn't like it ;-/ if yall have any questions about bnha PLEASE let me know bc i find extensive worldbuilding in text to be boring and obnoxious and this is probably the most yall will get re: the bnha universe
> 
> hopefully it's comprehensible

It begins in Qingqing, China, with the birth of a baby boy who exited the womb glowing like the sun, shining through the sticky slickness of blood and amniotic fluid and stunning the doctors so badly that he was nearly dropped. That child – the light-child – he is the first, but he is far from the last, and soon after, people the world over wake up to discover long-buried attributes that give them preternatural abilities, some fantastic, some mundane, with most falling somewhere in between, neither particularly impressive nor particularly useless. 

The newscasters call it the _Quirk phenomenon._ The scientists call it a pandemic of epic proportions, never before seen in human history. Most people – the sensible ones, the very same folks who happen to wake up one day with dormant genes suddenly activated and newly acquired superpowers of some manner - call it _chaos,_ and so it is.

It begins as a plague, a disease transmitted by rodents to humans that infects them, and in the right person, and draws out slumbering characteristics that had been previously suppressed by the genome. Biological data points coding for the development of claws or carnassial teeth or flexible bones or even telepathy are suddenly and instantaneously expressed, and the resulting sociopolitical fallout is nothing less than absolute mayhem.

Years are lost in limbo, but it doesn’t last forever; upstanding individuals with strong moral compasses and powerful Quirks take up the pursuit of justice when the police refuse to, unsure of how to act in a society suddenly undermined by the abrupt appearance of superhuman abilities, and the profession of heroism is born not long after. Quirk regulation laws are passed by the governments, Quirk permits are dispensed to those who need them, and slowly, slowly, the world adjusts. The impossible becomes the norm. Heroes are lauded for their actions and gain a place of high honor in society.

And, of course, the cycle begins anew.


	3. III

No one wants to be friends with Madara anymore.

_Before_ all of his preschool classmates had practically worshiped him – the Uchiha surname is powerful and prestigious and commands respect from anyone with their head screwed on straight, even children – and he’d been by far the most popular student, never having any shortage of people to play hero-and-villain with, never lacking any partners in any activity the teachers and aides wanted them to participate in. Everyone wanted to be on his team during recess, everyone wanted to sit with him at lunch, everyone wanted their desk to be next to his so they could color together and gossip about their future careers as glittering pro heroes.

_After,_ they have begun to avoid him like he’s been infected with the plague. He has an entire table to himself at lunch, now, and there is a strict divide between the _Madara-section_ and the _everyone-else-section_ that even the teachers seem to abide by. There’s a bubble around him now with a radius of roughly three meters, and no one wants to pop it.

Now, he’s not just loud and dramatic and kind of mean. Now, he’s not just the best artist in their grade. Now, he’s not just the rich kid from the powerful family who’s practically guaranteed a place in the world of heroics.

Now, he’s _dangerous._

The story of his Quirk’s manifestation catches like wildfire across a dry plain, sweeping through the community until everyone he meets knows what he did, knows what he’s responsible for, knows what kind of malicious, volatile power lurks beneath his skin, knows that he is all but helpless to control it.

Everyone except the new kid.

Senju Hashirama is friendly and smiley and stupidly courageous, and his first day in Madara’s preschool class marks the beginning of an era. He has a natural magnetism about him that draws people in, and reluctantly Madara finds himself curious despite the fact that he’s not allowed to have acquaintances anymore, but he knows better than to express it. He knows better than to try and reach out.

By second recess the other kids have gotten to him, and there’s one more heavy gaze following Madara as he goes out to play alone with his ball, leaving small charred footsteps behind him in the grass. He tells himself that it doesn’t hurt, that he doesn’t care, that he’s really above all of these dumb useless extras anyway, that friends are pointless when he’s so powerful, a little boy blessed and cursed with a strength that cannot be contained within him.

Something goes wrong, though. Hashirama has no fear of him, not even in what could be considered a healthy amount, and by lunch Madara finds himself joined by a companion for the first time in nine months.

He gapes at the Senju boy as he takes lumpy onigiri out of his bento, munching happily away and talking with his mouth full of food like Madara isn’t barely a foot and a half away from him, like Madara isn’t a risk posed to anyone with flesh.

“…an’ we just moved here, cause Father switched his headquarters from our old district to this one, which is good, ‘cause now I can make lots of new friends!”

“If you want _friends_ you should go away,” Madara growls, but the sound isn’t very menacing in his four-year-old voice, fingers twitching against the coated plastic of the lunch table.

The Quirk suppressants make his hands shake. They’re court-ordered, so he has to take them or he’ll be in big trouble, but they make his head foggy and his tummy swirly and his hands so shaky that he can hardly hold a crayon, let alone color inside the lines.

Three more months until Chichi-ue can petition to have him taken off them. Three more months of non-stop training with his Quirk, of blisters and burns and near-constant fevers, of having to watch his classmates flinch away from his touch because it’s too blazingly hot for them to bear.

The suppressants only last long enough to see him through the school day. When they run out once he gets home, Chichi-ue has to lock him in quarantine again, has to make sure that the firefighters are on standby, and then has to train him in fine control until he nearly collapses. There’s a special red telephone on the wall, one the teachers had installed just for Madara, one that wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t so bad.

He tastes ashes and gunpowder in the back of his mouth, and when the black flames start to lick up at the spaces between his fingers, he forces them down, down, down, back beneath his skin, boiling his blood as he extinguishes them.

The suppressants don’t work anymore. They can’t keep the Amaterasu locked up inside him like they used to.

Madara hasn’t told anyone. He doesn’t like the nursery that he knows they’d take him to if he did, all white and bland and glaringly bright, perfectly fireproof, all but literally a prison.

Hashirama’s sharp brown eyes are drawn to his quaking hands, and instantly Madara knows that this new kid’s boldness has ruined _everything._ He’d been getting so _good_ at keeping it a secret, was forcing himself to constantly repress his Quirk so that he can prove to the judge that he has the control he needs to be able to go off the suppressants, and now someone knows, and everything is all over. He’s already on the strongest drugs that can be prescribed to children of his age; the next step would be even more drastic than forcing his small body to process powerful chemicals that cause an unsafe amount of damage to his body systems.

When Madara meets his gaze, though, there is no terror in the depths of his chestnut irises. There is no fear. There is nothing but the soft light of _understanding,_ and that means—

There’s someone else who’s _like him._ Someone else born with a Quirk too strong for their body to handle. Someone else familiar with the grueling exercises meant to increase his control.

The recess bell rings just then, and before he’s thinking, he’s moving, taking Hashirama’s hand in his own and dragging the other boy out to the most isolated stretch of playground, the one that used to be his pretend hero headquarters, the one that everyone avoids now.

Madara sits them down and rests his hands on his knees. “Tell me.”

Hashirama gapes at him, tears welling up in his eyes. “Wh- what?”

“Your Quirk,” he demands, voice sharp, hardly breathing for the sake of his excitement. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing…”

The disappointment is instant and bitter, surging up his throat like bile, and he’s just about to let Amaterasu loose and force Hashirama back and away from him when he speaks again.

“…It’s _me.”_

Madara feels his eyebrows touch his hairline, because he knows that line of thinking. It’s been rattling around the inside of his skull for most of a year now, and he is intimately familiar with its traps and insidious lies.

“It’s not, but go on. What’s wrong with _you,_ then?”

Hashirama’s wet gaze sharpens into a glare, and even though he’s got to be the weirdest, most ridiculous person Madara’s ever met, there’s something about the edge of the malice leashed beneath his irises that would have him shivering were his control any less practiced. “You shouldn’t ask people that,” he snaps, hands tightening into fists, twisting the fabric of his shorts. “It’s not nice.”

Madara, unimpressed and unintimidated, glares right back, meeting his eyes without trepidation despite the fear chilling his bones. _“I’m_ not nice. Tell me.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

_“No!”_

“Tell me or I’ll set your stupid hair on fire!”

Hashirama shrieks and throws his arms over his dumb-looking coconut head, scrambling back and away, and for half a moment guilt roils violently in his gut – he’s done it _again,_ he wasn’t even really trying and he did it _again,_ he’s a bad person and he could never dream of being a hero the way he is—

When Hashirama flinches, the ground beneath Madara’s shoes cracks and splinters, and he has a second to recognize the damp scent of springtime rain before the dirt explodes upwards, something strong and unyielding and breathtakingly powerful wrapping vice-tight around his body and taking him along with it as it surges higher and higher.

He can’t help but screech in his surprise, instinctively letting loose the black flames of Amaterasu in some desperate attempt at self-preservation, and that’s his salvation. The odd restraints just so happen to be flammable, and they’re reduced to ash before they lift him past the five foot mark.

The teachers come running, yelling, and Hashirama is crying, and Madara can hardly think straight, but the one thing clear in his mind for the first time since his Quirk came in is a startling sense of belonging.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed it! they mean the world to me and inspire me to keep writing


End file.
